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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22832326">a knife in the country</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak'>cicak</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: Picard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Can you tell?, Character Study, F/M, I have a lot of feelings about Agnes Jurati, Stardust City Rag, do not read before watching 1x05, massive spoilers for 1x05, update: did not get nearly as jossed as I thought, will be jossed within a week</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:47:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,322</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22832326</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Agnes can't even begin to state the nature of her psychiatric emergency.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Agnes Jurati/Bruce Maddox, Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>88</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a knife in the country</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Agnes was always a disappointment.</p>
<p>She never could bring herself to resist doing what she wasn't supposed to do. She was the smart woman who nevertheless was fucking her boss, but not just her boss, her mentor, this giant of cybernetics, giving herself to his shadow, letting him dwarf her, letting him take credit for her ideas, willingly. She loves him. She was twenty seven when he let her seduce him. Hes older than her dad by a few months, which turned her on in ways she's never thought about too hard in case she came to.</p>
<p>There's pictures in Data's file of Bruce at the tribunal on the Enterprise, when he was her age. She knows the whole file inside out and backwards, including that picture, the angles of his face, his feline grace and dark eyes, as well as that mid century skinniness that Starfleet men had back then, all sinew and skin and no muscle definition.<br/>
<br/>
Bruce is good enough in bed (and in the shower, in the lab's walk in, and one time memorably in a stopped turbolift) for her to justify this to other people as normal levels of fucking up. She loves him. Loves him in the way she loves things she can't have, loves him the way she loves positronic brains and cutting edge science and clean, sterile labs and funding, oh the funding. Loves that they made life together the hardest way possible, made an army of children together and then went home and carefully didn't make children the old fashioned way, both artificially sterile the way he demanded. He's old. She's young. She has her whole life ahead of her; she can't have a baby (his baby, roly poly and chubby with masses of dark hair and eyes, the opposite of her). An army of synthetic robots who can build starships and destroy a civilisation, yes, but not a baby human with his feline eyes and knowing smirk. Not <em>evidence</em>.<br/>
Maybe he always knew that it would go wrong and destroy her future. Why contribute to destroying it on two axes?</p>
<p>A decade and change after it all went to shit, she stands over his body, feeling like she's floating a few inches outside of her head, watching herself as she kills him.</p>
<p>He takes time to die, and he knows its her. She could have just shot him in his sleep. Could have tried, at least, to hide it. </p>
<p>She knows she won't get away with it. Somehow, it doesn't matter.</p><hr/>
<p><br/>
Rios is her type, older (a bit), handsome (very), beardy (so beardy), unavailable (for different reasons to Bruce). He makes her feel awkward and childish even though he doesn't know anything about her mission. She's calmer around the Admiral, even if she feels so guilty she might be sick some days. Raffi doesn't like her, but its in a dismissive way, like she has no time for fools like Agnes, and Agnes can work with that. Raffi doesn't trust herself but does trust the Admiral, so Agnes can walk in that crack, letting the Admiral vouch for her and just being as close to her normal self as she can otherwise.<br/>
<br/>
They're all Starfleet, apart from her, which helps. She's the anomaly. She's barely been off world, never served, doesn't have even a recreational pilot's licence. She has a driving licence that entitles her to fly up to ten meters off the ground, same one she got at sixteen in drivers ed class. The crew all work together like clockwork, programmed just as much as the synths, as borg drones. Sure, their programming took a lot of time, but it's conditioning all the same. They work together seamlessly, say the words, help each other, all as automatic as the autonomic system. They're all obvious, they'd never suspect she'd be devious, never suspect her of having hidden programming. Not Agnes, who is awkward and has never fired a phaser and who just wants to be included.<br/>
<br/>
Elnor is the other anomaly on board, but he's basically a deadly, sword wielding preteen who loves shiny things and chocolate and his new Daddy. She can relate. He spends a lot of time looking at cat pictures, Picard, and more cat pictures and whining that he doesn't understand why they won't include him, which helps her more than she should admit. She figures as long as Picard likes her, she doesn't have to worry about Elnor cutting her head off. She sends him the good cat pictures from her own collection, and talks to him about her past pets.</p>
<p>Of course she just fucked the mission, so that deadly tweenie is probably about to slice her head clean off, cute kittens not withstanding.<br/>
<br/>
The EMH forces himself into being once again. "Please state the nature of the psychiatric emergency", he says, at the start of the conversation tree, and she sees the way he jumps the tracks of his programming into carefully simulated panic of his own before she shuts him off.</p>
<p>He's her favourite of Rios' holos for personal reasons; he's a reskinned mark 4 EMH with the original voice track of the abandoned mark 1 LMH. Anyone in AI research knows the story of how Zimmerman, in true nerd fashion, filtered the Starfleet medical doctors on human and then sorted by best and picked the one at the top and in the process discovered that this pinnacle of humanity wasn't so human after all. Zimmerman never got the credit for outing Bashir, especially given how Bashir got away with keeping his commission and his licence and even his parents only got a slap on the wrist, typical Human privilege. Bashir is from Earth, and until his parents got greedy they were pure bred homo sapiens right back to the split from monkeys. Zimmerman kept the voice option out of both spite and because it was the only part of Bashir not considered to be dangerously augment. It usually isn't used in EMH instances, but maybe Rios was running through the options and liked it, liked the plummy vowels and gentle caring sarcasm. She probably wont ever get the answer to that, or why Rios insists on skinning all his holograms with his own beautiful face.  <br/>
<br/>
"Please state the nature of the psychiatric emergency", the EMH says again, and sees the corpse of Maddox and by then the alert has already gone out. Rios, the real one, will be coming down. The Admiral will be hurt, furious, lost, betrayed in a way that he won't be able to deal with. A man coddled by Starfleet and history and private Tal Shiar bodyguards, undone by her, a round faced, socially awkward, terminally underestimated tragedy, walked right into the heart of it and slid a knife in his ribs.<br/>
<br/>
When Rios comes hurtling into sickbay, shes still outside of her own head enough to see herself how he sees her, tear stained, covered in blood, frantically turning off the EMH as he spawns into existence, panicking.<br/>
<br/>
Rios, flesh and blood, comes over, takes her into his arms. Hugs her, and as the voices come closer, the rumble of the admiral, the mezzo panic of Raffi, Agnes lets the last few seconds before it all falls apart belong to her, and kisses Rios full on the mouth. Rios kisses her back immediately, opening up a chink in his armour for a kiss of comfort, for a woman hysterical and desperate, but she surges into him. This isn't a kiss of a woman who is a witness. It's not <em>chaste</em>. She's killed a man, a dangerous, terrifying destroyer of worlds. She's saved countless lives. So she takes what she wants, takes this as a trophy, of triumph. Lets her light shine unencumbered. 
Rios kisses her back and it's glorious and although it's under a false sun, she takes a moment to radiate in its warmth all the same.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Wrote this on my sickbed in a state of shock post 1x05. I have a feeling that this episode ruined the opportunity for all the fun bottle episode type fics I wanted to write, so I figured I should get a Rios/Jurati kiss in while I could. Plus you know, I love <br/>T H E  A N G S T.</p>
<p>Title is from Hawksley Workman's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5quMvkceK0">A Knife in the Country</a><br/>I'm alternating screaming about this and the witcher over on my <a href="http://cicaklah.tumblr.com">tumblr</a> so come, lets be friends.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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